Community Action 

Reversing Attrition

Making the Change in My Community

Creating a New Community

Supporting CSI

Community Action

REVERSING ATTRITION
Bigger, better, larger, faster, newer - 3000 media messages a day offer a vision of the future. Teenagers train on video games to be adult "road warriors." Children are raised in day care while parents work long hours and then, through the miracle of the Internet, work a few more hours before bedtime. Most activities are formally organized. Our dreams are the dreams of the TV set or the movie screen. Our heroes are the celebrities of screen, sports and business - corresponding to sex, violence and money.  Consolidation of everything is the national value - schools, businesses, financial institutions. All of these things take us away from the source of our humanity - living face-to-face, day-to-day, in the company of our family and friends in community.

MAKING THE CHANGE IN MY COMMUNITY
Living in small local communities and changing small local communities have the same requirement - getting involved. The first step in any such change is the organization of like minded people. Since the wish, whether stated or unstated, for the small community is common to most people, organizing requires first a vision of what is possible and secondly a model or instructions of how to begin. Our Community Course serves as such a model and set of instructions. Other areas of this web site point out both the benefits of the small local community and the trends that give it impetus.

CREATING A NEW COMMUNITY
Communities are always being built. A long standing pasture land is suddenly transformed into a group of homes, churches and schools. Arguments about new new developments are ongoing. A favorite topic is the professional developer - a person often categorized as greedy and opportunist. Yet he or she represents only one way new communities get built. Gated communities, condominiums, planned communities, low income communities, urban renewal - all are the myriad ways that new homes and neighborhoods are built.

The weaknesses of all modern communities are the same -  a planned dependence on the automobile, with the understanding that the necessary resources for total living are always many miles away. Houses get larger and more expensive. Three car garages become common. Typically there are too many houses in a particular price range - establishing ghettos for rich and poor.

The “next generation” developments will be totally community oriented. They will reflect the limitation of resources, the need for integration of all races, all occupations, and all ages as well as the integration of town and field.

SUPPORTING CSI
One of the best ways to support small communities is to support Community Service, the organization dedicated to their creation and improvement. The first step is to become a member of our organization. Other ways of supporting us are to provide information and references about small community, contribute articles about small community and, finally, to contribute funds for the further expansion of our activities.